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Is Innovation Really a "Team Sport"?
It is often said that "Innovation is a Team Sport." However, the excellent book, "Serial Innovators", speaks to the critial role of "cutting-edge thinkers who repeatedly create and deliver breakthrough innovations and new products in large, mature organizations."
How do organizations manage the polarity between "individual" and "team" rewards & recognition to encourage the behaviors needed to both conceptualize breakthrough ideas and successfully commercialize them?
12 answers
The innovative power of the crowd far supersedes the sum of the individuals involved. It is definitely a team sport. I have run multiple hackathons across the world. With all my 20+ years of experience in tech, I could never have come up with some of the brilliant ideas that diverse teams from Silicon Valley, to Singapore to Dubai, came up with. Mind blowing experience to source the power of the innocent crowd. To dip your toes into the world of outside in, crowd sourced innovation.
Also in brainstorming sessions, I have experienced that 1 bright spark might have a bright spark of an idea. You do have those brilliant, differentiated minds who come up with novel, unimaginable thoughts. However when others get involved with the same idea, it always blossoms into something beyond the imagination of the originator. One of the biggest challenges with innovation, in the context of enterprises, is 'The Bridge' i.e. how do you see the innovation scale within the enterprise so that it finally adds value and delivers outcomes. Too many ideas fail to cross over the Bridge and get relegated to annals of folklore of what could have been!. In order to scale out, you again need a team, including folks who can envision how to get the innovation to survive the tussle with large scale production rollout and adoption.
To innovate, team up.
How do you get work done without other people?
You can have the finest, most innovative idea that ever existed, but you always need other people to actualize it.
If an organization commits to the value that new ideas are good, and actually sets up policies and procedures that support this value, the question is moot.
People can be flexible at work about team vs. individual credit if the rewards process is seen as transparent and fair and it actually meets their needs.
Steve Jobs needed Steve Wozniak. Jobs cared about personal adulation. Wozniak didn't.
Be it a team sport or an indervidual person, everyone is motivated in different ways and it is usually presumed that money is a key motivator. But this is not always the case; as survey after survey tells us that money is ranked five or lower by most people.
The following three things always score highly when people are asked what is most important to them:
1. Respect
2. A sense of accomplishment
3. Recognition
Motivation: To keep either an individual or team motivated: They need to feel involved in the on-going development and progress of your company / project as they often have great ideas that can make a significant difference and when they are involved, they buy‐in faster and resist less. This means changes can be implemented more quickly and easily.
Communication: Very few organisations can be accused of over‐communicating. "No news is good news" is not always correct! Team members want regular updates on the progress of the organisation and their personal performance. Use email, telephone, 1‐2‐1 and group meetings to keep your team informed. One common criticism in many organisations is how many people do not receive feedback of any kind relating to their performance.
Celebrate individual and team performance: Catch people doing something right and focus on recognizing excellent performance. On an individual basis you can provide positive reinforcement, give awards, and use a newsletter to highlight specific achievements. Send thank‐you, birthday, and anniversary cards as well as congratulatory notes. Make personal phone calls, and send emails. Better yet, if you work in a large organisation, ensure a senior manager sends the email or makes the phone call.
Recognising team efforts: post performance charts on the wall or arrange an impromptu get‐together. Treat them to lunch; post team pictures on your website if you have one; put up team pictures in the workplace; give people certificates, coffee mugs, etc; these are surprisingly motivating gestures. An element of fun lifts morale and increases productivity. Encourage each team member to bring in his/her and Try to recognise someone every day.
Set challenging goals: People hold themselves to very high standards and they like to achieve what is expected of them. If you set challenging goals your team will work hard to accomplish them, providing of course, they are realistic and achievable. It is amazing what people can accomplish when they are given the opportunity to perform. Communicate these goals and keep your team informed on progress.
Give people the tools to succeed: No team will stay motivated if they do not have the necessary tools required to do their job. This includes equipment, internal support, marketing materials, training, etc.
Manage poor performance: Teams expect to be managed – particularly individuals who do not perform to team standards or contribute enough to the efforts of the team. Many managers, however, ignore poor performance because they are afraid of the potential conflict. Instead, they hope that the situation will resolve itself. It never does and this "blind" approach causes high turnover and contributes to low morale. While poor performance and conflict are seldom enjoyable to deal with, you have a responsibility to your team and your organisation to manage it.
Lead by example: If you want your team to treat each other with respect and dignity, you need to set the tone. If you expect them to be motivated and enthusiastic it is critical that you behave in this manner.
As a manager or leader, your team looks to you for direction and guidance.
Collective intelligence is where you reconcile cutting-edge thinkers and team, you brainstorm and build on each others' ideas. You get more creative and improve your ideas.
Once you have the idea, the key is the execution to make it a success.
In terms of rewards & recognition, I would say you have to adjust to phases & pipeline. Great idea can lead to a failure. But this is ok, this is how you create a culture of risk taking that ultimately brings additional ideas.
Innovation is very much a team sport, but you play in a different pool. The skill-sets and midsets of innovators are very different to that of mature organizations, and innovators vote with their feet twice a day. Incubators and innovation hubs look and act the way they are for a reason.
Innovators also expect to get 'bought out' and the team objecttive is to get there as rapidly as possible. The thinking is short to medium term; in the long term everyone will have the innovation and its no longer be a competitive advantage.
Yeah - the smart products and services are very complex and complexity will increase in the future. To cope with complexity you need good team!
Idea and innovation are two different things. Idea derives an innovation. An idea may be an individual's pitch but converting into reality is teamwork. When idea turns into the reality that is an innovation. You need a team of motivated, skilled and optimistic people for innovation.
Innovation team having single dynamic experienced skilled leader is easy for success who is free to use own vision to make final decisions, which helps process moving fast and work for Works for consensus on decisions and Shares openly and authentically with others regarding personal feelings, opinions, thoughts, and perceptions about problems and conditions. Good service anticipates needs and solves problems which is prompt, efficient and exceeds expectations comes from well-trained employees.
85 months ago
Insightful take on innovation as a “team sport.” While collaboration clearly fuels creativity through diverse perspectives, the article also highlights an important nuance—strong individual ownership and leadership often act as the spark.
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